Hard Candy
by Melanie Geller
Summary: ...and it makes you feel all right. But it's just the same hard candy you're remembering again. Monica and Chandler, AU teen fic. : R&R if you want to!
1. Introduction

_**Hi everyone! Yeah, you guessed it...a new fic. lol. And this should be a...long one. ;) Good news, though, Love at First Sight is almost done, and the same goes for Let Me Let Go and When We Get there. Okay? lol. So it isn't that bad that I'm starting a new one. Beautiful still has a ways to go, though, so...lol**_

**_The lyrics I will always use in this fic as well as the title of the story come from the song Hard Candy by Counting Crows. It's a great song, and I suggest you listen to it, lol. _**

**_A few things about this fic: Monica and Chandler are teenagers (that's right, it's a teenage fic!) and they don't know each other at all until I introduce them. Ross and Chandler never went to high school together, either, but they will meet. Everything should be explained in the next few chapters. _**

**_I wrote this chapter in first person, something new to me. I doubt the whole fic will be in this narrative, but the chapters where Chandler is looking back upon his days there will most likely be. :) _**

**_This is more of an introduction to the whole fic, and I have high hopes for this one. Believe it or not, this idea came to me in a dream last night (corny, I know, lol) but I'd been sort of thinking about it before. So, technically, it's still my idea. ;) _**

**_Disclaimer: For the entire fic, I don't own anyone except the characters I choose to create. :)_**

**_Please let me know if I should continue. :)_**

_On certain Sundays in November  
When the weather bothers me  
I open drawers of other summers  
Where my shadows used to be_

Sometimes I don't know where I'd be without her, and those summers we spent together. I remember exactly how reluctant I'd been to go to the shore that first year; my mother had to practically bribe me in order to join her and Steven, her lover at the time.

I remember it perfectly now, no details are spared, though some other memories in my mind blur to make room for the etched engravings I have carved of the two of us. I hardly care, though, for so long as I have the memories, I have the feelings of what once was.

The first time I ever laid eyes on her, I think my heart skipped a beat or two. She was standing by the ocean, a look of fear gracing her delicately shaped face. She pulled her straw hat tightly around her face as the wind threatened to carry it away. Her toes were poised at the opening of the ocean, and somehow I knew that she wasn't going to dive in.

I used to tell her, when we would lay on the sand by the water, almost letting the waves kiss our skin, that she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.

She would then blush, an array of reds and pinks would crawl from the bottom of her neck and reach that soft spot right underneath her eyes. "Stop," she would say, giggling and reaching out to stroke my hair. I knew she hated being complimented in such an honest way, but when I was around her, I was someone else.

I was good. I was kind. I was honorable. I was almost a man.

The first summer, when I was sixteen, she had just turned fifteen. Two summers after that, we were years older, it seemed. Not only was I eighteen and she was seventeen, but it felt as if we were a middle aged couple, that was how comfortable it was. During those three years, I learned so much about myself, about her, and about life in general. I learned what it meant to be in love, I learned what it meant to hurt, and I learned what it meant to want to die.

If I close my eyes now, I can lay down and try to picture her. Her dark hair fans around her face, as white as china. Even with the sun beating down on her skin, she always managed to keep her complexion pale. The ocean terrified her. Each time the water would creep closer to her, she would recede and head back to the home.

It took all the strength she had to simply lay by the water with me. I recall one of the last times I saw her, we were laying on the dry warm sand, barely letting the waves tickle the bottom of our skin.

_"Chandler," she whispered, holding onto my arm tightly. "I'm not scared anymore."_

_Her words frightened me more than anything I'd ever heard, and growing up with a mother that wrote erotica and a proudly gay father, I'd heard more than I ever wished. "You're...you're not?" I managed to reply, my heart beating faster._

_"No, I'm not." She sighed, letting go of my arm and standing up._

_"Monica!" I cried out after her, watching her wade into the water until it stroked her knees, gently lapping up against her. She looked ghostly pale and weak in the moonlight, and I wanted nothing more than just to hold her for one last time. But she wasn't the type of girl that wanted someone to comfort her; she would much rather wish to be the nurturer than the one being nurtured. "Why are you doing this?" My voice rang out to the sea, and I was sure that the echo would travel for miles, leaving residents in China or somewhere equally as far perplexed as to why I was so amazed she was crossing the ocean of her greatest fear._

_Walking back towards me, a faint smile growing in the incandescent glow of the moon, she whispered. "I just wanted to feel the ocean." She turned around, back facing me, and watched the waves roll in from miles away. "I didn't want to leave without knowing what it was like."_

_Her words carrying a deeper meaning than I would ever know, I reached for her hand and there we stood: Two children, holding onto one another at the beginning of the vast dark sea. We were older than we ever should have been._

I frown, placing the letters back in the dusty drawer, waiting for Heather to return from work. The New York skyline smirks at me from my bedroom window. Though I pay the rent each month for the surrounding walls, this place has never felt like home. A cold November frost thickly coats the city streets, and all I can think about is the ocean. Those summers live on, every day, in my mind.

I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. I can almost smell the salt from thesea in the air. And now I see her again, standing by the ocean, never daring to go in.

-

_**So...was it good or bad or just somewhere in between? Please let me know, and then I'll decide if I should continue this one or not. I really think it has some potential, and can be better than it looks right now. I promise. lol. And if you did end up liking it and think you know where I'm going with it...ha, you probably don't .But hey, that's okay. :) And who knows, I may just be saying this to throw you off.**_

_**Or I may not. ;)**_

_**Please review and let me know what you think. Sorry if the first-person narrative threw anyone off, too. I've never done it before, but it seemed to fit this well. **_

_**Mel**_


	2. Chapter One: Into the waters

**_Thanks for the positive reviews in the last chapter! Also, sorry about the spelling mistake towards the end. I always change a few minor details before a final upload, and it just so happened that I made a spelling mistake. ;) Let's hope I don't make another anytime soon. (I know now that I most certainly will. lol.)_**

**_Please leave me a review of this chapter, if you want to. I've decided that this chapter will also be in first person narrative, but am still undecided about the rest of the fic. It just depends on what you guys think. I've heard some people wanting third person narrative, but none requesting this style. All the same, I may continue with it simply because that's how I started. ;)_**

_**Please enjoy!**_

My first memory- the one that haunts me to this day- lives on, burned like a stamped scar in the black hole of my mind.

_As carefree as a lilac dancing through the breeze, I twirl shamelessly beside a crystalline sapphire pond. My honeysuckle taffeta skirt billows beneath me, like waves flowing from the kiss of porcelain skin. A sticky coating of leftover candy coats my cherry lips as I sing into the wind, a melody of enchanting whispers, oblivious of what is to come. I am three._

_My brother, sullen and serious at five, scowls at my delighted nonchalance. Looking back, I know he would give anything to be as blithe as we once were, but we cannot take back the past._

_"Monica," he groans, looking up from his cardboard dinosaur book. "Can't you dance somewhere else?"_

_I laugh, and do my pirouettes closer to him, floating dangerously near the edge of the pond. "No," I chant. "No, no, no. No, no, no."_

_"Mommy," he calls out. "Monica is bothering me again." _

_My mother, looking lively and lean with something she lacks now, a spirit, simply shakes her head and laughs, pretending to scold me. Though I am now the 'favorite', if that's what you can call my relationship to my parents, Ross was the first 'miracle child', and that transcended my needs. Then. _

_"Mommy, Monica is bothering me again!" I sqeal in delight as he tries to brandish me with his book, but misplace my small pink feet and tumble down the hill into the pond. _

_The next thing I remember is waking up. Though I sometimes claim not to remember those five minutes in between, they haunt me to this day. _

_"We almost lost you," my mother sobs beside the lush green trees. "I almost lost my baby."_

_Hand in hand, my parents leaned on one another as I, their new miracle daughter, returned seemingly unharmed to the free spirited dance. _

_Little did they know, little did any of us know, that wouldn't be the last time my parents almost lost their baby. _

Even if we wanted to, we couldn't go back and not take the days lacking worry for granted.

We are simply never happy in our own skin, never embracing the mistakes we are, never accepting the fact that truly, we are all misshapen particles, fighting through a storm of grief and sickness, trying to find our way.

-

"Monica," my mother pleads, her words bleeding with a newfound sincerity. "Won't you take off your headphones and look at the ocean?" Her eyes, a mirror image of my own, beseech me to listen for once. I've never been the poster child for anything, but I have to admit that she tries. "It's beautiful," she urges for an added measure.

I sigh and remove my headphones. My music, my solace, the remedial words of Led Zeppelin, will have to wait. Outside, the waters roar and the fine dark hairs on my arms prickle in a dance of fear and reminder. It's beautiful, in a terrifying way, I think. The blue hollow never seems to end, and this scares me more than anything. Everything on Earth seems to have an end, a place where it just ceases to exist, but not the ocean. It is infinite and engulfs us all whether we are aware of it or not.

For as long as I can remember, there has always been an end in sight, a defining moment when all of the sudden, I will be no more.

-

As a thin layer of twilight begins to paint the oceanic sky in a mile of iridescent turquoises and emeralds, our station wagon hums into the familiar worn spot on the driveway of our summerhouse.

It is my fifteenth summer, and the tenth time I can remember pulling into the gravel-worn driveway, so contrasting from the silken sand merely twenty feet away.

My dark hair, a thin curtain for the lie I have crafted around myself, hides me from the world. I breathe in slowly, feigning sleep.

"Jack," my mother, Judy, whispers. "Should we carry her inside?"

My eyelashes flutter against my face, and the effect somehow reminds me of a thousand spiders dancing in the filtered moonlight. I can imagine him pursing his lips in thought, crinkling the part of his forehead where his skin meets the defining edges of wiry gray.

"Judy, don't you think she's a bit old for us to treat her like this?" His voice rumbles softly, tantamount to the impact of the ocean's waves, and perhaps stronger.

"You know as well as I do that…"

And she doesn't say it. Somehow, I don't know what possessed my mother to hold back her words and drink them in a bitter cocktail of her own agony.

"Hey, princess," my father combs the hair from my face and I can feel him unbuckling the seatbelt from around me. He lifts me from the seat and I can feel my mother watching, swifter than a hawk.

For a moment, I consider holding my breath until I choked a silver shade of blue; perhaps she would believe the worst had finally happened. But then I think of the times we were almost torn apart, and they play barely more than an old TV show rerun, a mere warning of what could come.

"Dad," I breathe, opening my eyes to the world around me. "I'm awake. I can walk."

He smiles at my mother, a slight hint that either their marriage is further deteriorating or finally being sewed up. I can no longer detect their moods from their plastered smiles, and it hurts me to think that I was the one that ripped out the seams.

"Mom," Ross mutters from the backseat. "I'm going to go to the boardwalk." He grabs his weatherworn keyboard and nods to me as he leaves. Lately, he's been careful to say goodbye to me because he never knows if it will be the last time.

Ross is almost seventeen, and he does as he pleases. I wouldn't go as far to coin him a rebel, but he certainly tries to be one. Unfortunately -or fortunately, but it depends on how you look at it- my parents don't watch over him as much as they should. The summers are especially difficult because we get almost full reign of the small seashore town; it barely stretches three miles.

Actually, he gets the freedom of doing as he pleases. I, on the other hand, get the freedom of doing as my parents please.

"Mom," I test her after I am done unpacking my belongings in my usual pale yellow room. "Can I go for a walk along the ocean?"

Her brow furrows, and I can tell that she is waiting for my father to return from the car for a definite answer. In her eyes, I can see constant worry, and I'm sure that mine cast the exact same shadow.

"I promise to be back in an hour, and I'll be careful."

Finally, she gives in. "All right. If you're not back in an hour, I'm sending out the search parties." She hands me an oversized straw hat. "Wear this. It's getting colder. Be careful."

I head towards the door, surprised that they are extending my virtual leash. "I will."

The handle is almost warm in my hand when I hear her voice again, both wishing and urgent at the same time, a mass of emotion choked back in her throat. "And Monica?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't go in."

The screen door shuts lightly behind me as my bare feet pat the sand around me. I melt into the darkness, pulling the hat tighter to my face. A lone figure stands several sandcastles away, watching the intimidating tide lap against my feet. For some reason he doesn't scare me, unlike the rest of this world does.

My mother's words resound in my ears: "Don't go in." Of course she was referring to the ocean, and it doesn't hit me until I am in bed that night, a stick figure hovering under poorly drawn hoards of woolen blankets. I never answered her.

Yet I didn't even need to. This unspoken act between us has been going on for years, a sort of hieroglyphic mother-daughter language that has weathered barriers we never should have been forced to cross. She always warns me never to go in the ocean, and she has no need. No matter the amount of fear she tries tobury in my chest, a part of her will always know.

I will never go in.

-

**_Shall I continue? Do you like it? Love it? Hate it? Did you even read it? lol. Well, anyways, any pointers or types of reviews are welcome. _**

**_It's weird right now, but Monica and Chandler will be meeting very soon, and things will get better. ;) And remember, never assume about the characters. lol. _**

**_I hope everyone is having a great weekend! _**

****

**_Mel_**


	3. Chapter Two: The Ordinary Girl

_**Thank you guys for all the reviews, and I'm sorry it has been so long! It won't happen again, honest. :) **_

**_Please let me know what you think, more and more will be revealed as the story progresses._**

_**Disclaimer: All characters property of Bright, Kauffman, and Crane. Lyrics to "Hard Candy" are property of the Counting Crows. And I'm still wondering if I spelled 'Kauffman' right. ;)**_

_

* * *

_

_She is standing by the waters  
as her smile begins to curl  
in this or any other summer,  
she is something all together different  
never just an ordinary girl  
_----

_-Chandler, Present Time-_

I don't know what struck me first about her: the fact that she wore a hat at dusk; her hunched figure, looking incredibly small in comparison to the ocean; or her eyes, filled with such a combination of love, hate, and fear.

I knew she was different and I knew she was beautiful.

And I was about to discover so very much more.  
----

_-Chandler-_

I hate the sand, I hate the beach, and I absolutely loathe the tiny pink umbrella cruising high above my virgin strawberry margarita.

Pink is my mother's color, bursting with energy and femininity.

Pink is my father's color, also bursting with energy, and sadly, femininity.

Pink is _not_ Steven's color. Steven, my mother's lover, is a man's man. I hesitate to call him her boyfriend. If he were her boyfriend, she wouldn't have to profess her love to him every waking moment. She wouldn't have to caress his chest in public. And most of all, they wouldn't have to gaze into one another's eyes just to be certain they are together. If it was truly love or something equally important, they would know it. She loves him to the extent that makes him a sort of creature to embrace, but not one to hold onto.

I am the one to hold onto in a loose and yet permanent grip, minus the love in between.

But, hey, it's fine with me. I'd much rather just stay out of all the mother-son relationships. And the father-son relationships.

Hell, relationships? _Screw 'em_. I know I sound like the typical angst-ridden teenager, and maybe I am, but believe me when I say that getting too close to someone will only cause it to be more painful when you have to say goodbye.

I sit a safe distance from the water, wishing I'd brought a friend to share in this misery. Who would've thought the Jersey shore would be _so_ uneventful?

Sixty yards down, a young couple delights in constructing sand castles with their toddler. His brown eyes sparkle, I can even tell that from here. The sand castle they are building is enormous. When I was younger, the closest I got to royalty were the contents of my sand pail turned over and matted with sea water. There goes _my _castle. And yet, from the distance, this family's castle is more like a sea palace, complete with turrets and a deep moat. I'm sure that the parents are enjoying themselves more than their young son, but they work only to see the joy in his eyes.

It'll be years before he realizes that all the sand castles he builds will be swept away by an unforgiving tide.  
----

_-Monica-_

He's still standing there, this guy. I can't quite figure out what is wrong with him, but during the forty-five minutes I've contemplated the dangers of this damn ocean, he's barely blinked.

I'm tempted, almost, to parade over there and ask him why he's just standing over there, gazing at a bunch of water.

But I'm not brave enough for such confrontations.

And, besides, I'm doing the exact same thing.  
----

_-Chandler-_

I've been watching this girl watch the ocean for over a half hour. If you've never watched someone watch something, it's a peculiar task. You have to do it carefully, and this mostly comes down to the stare-factor. If you stare _too_ long, you run the risk of being labeled a stalker or a pervert. I prefer to think I'm above such nicknames, but sometimes I just don't know.

You have to take glimpses and focus your eyes on non-existent objects, pretending to be immensely interested in a seagull, all the while noticing that she's barefoot.

That's right, _barefoot._

I'm almost questioning my own sanity as I wonder why someone is barefoot at the most barefoot of places, but something tells me that this girl isn't the shoeless type.

_Hell_, she's wearing a straw hat and clothing that practically engulfs her small body. It just surprises me how free her feet are, beneath her concealed figure.

For this reason, I test it as my opener as I approach her.

"Hi. You're barefoot." _Smooth, Chandler_, I think.

She doesn't even look up, but responds nonetheless. "It's a _beach_. Everyone is barefoot."

"I'm not." I look down at my Birkenstocks.

"That's weird." She looks up at me and I can see that she's wearing sunglasses.

"Well, I think it's weird that you are wearing sunglasses and the sun is setting." Never before had a girl actually responded in challenge towards my attempts at conversation. Sure, I'd gotten the shrug and laugh, as well as the all too famous walk-away. But this? This was new.

She gestures towards the horizon. "There's the sun. It's still in the sky."

"Yep. But it's going to set in like ten minutes, you know."

"It tends to do that around this time of day."

I can almost detect humor in her voice, but I've always been awful at reading people. "So are you some kind of sunset timer?"

"Just a fan," she sighs.

"So did you think about the fact that the sun would be setting soon when you left your house? Or do you just take your sunglasses everywhere with you?"

"When I left, the sun was higher in the sky. But you know that; you've been watching me for the past forty-five minutes." At this, she smiles, thank God.

But I can feel my cheeks blushing furiously. "So, ah, you saw me?"

"Seagulls can't be _that_ interesting." She shakes her head side to side, and her hair nestles nicely beneath her shoulders.

"Well, since you seem to have been watching me as I watched you, maybe it's about time that I found out the name of the one I've watched." As these words tumble ungracefully out of my mouth, I'm amazed.

"What do you think my name is?"

_"What?"_

"As you were staring at me, I'm sure you wondered what my name was. Right?"

Wrong. I want to tell her that I wondered why she wouldn't touch the water, why she wore clothes that covered her entire body. I questioned her lack of shoe attire, and I wondered what color her eyes were. But her name? Not so much.

"I, uh, thought it was Lindsey," I lie effortlessly. "You look _just _like a Lindsey."

"Really?" She puts a hand on her hip. "I'm about as far away from a Lindsey as possible."

"Oh. Then what is it?"

"You look like a Mark or a Christopher. I don't know why, but I'm just going to assume this. I assume things, you see. And sometimes I don't change my mind. I have _lots_ of flaws," she states quite blatantly.

Normally, I am the one to shock people with my straightforwardness. But finally, I think I've found someone more blatant and forthcoming in an obvious, attention-grabbing way. It's oddly disconcerting.

"Well, we've all got flaws." I try quickly to change the subject. If I ever see this girl again, we're bound to talk about something of the sort. But usually, my less endearing qualities (_I have endearing qualities?) _don't serve as the immediate topic of conversation. "I'm afraid you might be disappointed when you hear my name, though."

"Why's that?"

"It's...strange."

"Well, what is it?" From behind those dark rimmed sunglasses, I'm sure she's staring at me.

"Uh...Chandler."

"Assuming the_ 'uh'_ isn't some sort of weird title, I like it."

"Really," I raise my eyebrows at her.

"It's different. I bet you're different, too."

"Sometimes." I pride myself on trying to stand out and be different in my own self-effacing way, but for some reason I didn't want to tell her this.

"No. You are."

"You weren't kidding about the assumptions, were you?"

"Nope," she shakes her head. "I'm a bit stubborn."

"So do _you_ have a name?" It's a dumb question, really, but she'll get the gist.

"If I told you no, would you believe me?"

"Yes." I state it as simply as I can, proving that I can be just as challenging as she.

"Then I don't have one."

"All right." I turn my attention towards the ocean, shielding my eyes from the sun.

"Why are you covering your eyes?"

I laugh in stutters within the walls of my chest. "I wanted to see the sunset."

"Sunglasses would come in handy, huh?" She wants to win, and I know it.

"No. I like to watch all my sunsets like this."

"So they're your sunsets?"

I shrug. "As much as they are anyone else's, I suppose."

"I like that. But I've always liked to think that they're mine. Usually, I'm the only one out here watching it set, and I like it that way. But I don't mind if you watch it with me." She talks so simply, and yet I can't shake the feeling that she chooses her words carefully.

"I think that's the most I've heard you talk so far."

"Sometimes, you say more without uttering a sound."

"You're sort of philosophical," I mutter.

"You're sort of..._not_." She laughs, andthis time I think it's for real.

The sun melts before us into the ocean, and a newly carved crescent moon bears down upon the tinted ocean, lighting up the beach in pale turquoise blues.

"I guess it's over."

"You guessed right," she smiles. "I have to go now, my mom will _kill _me."

And this comment brings me back to earth from my high vantage point. For a moment there, it was just the two of us and that ocean. We weren't people, we weren't children, we were holographic images stamped into the sand and time, watching a routine so simple and complex at the same moment. I'd never felt so out of body and so real at juxtaposed moments.

And, hey, this is saying something for me.

"So, uh, will I see you again?"

"I told you I liked to watch the sunset each night." She removes her sunglasses. "My name is Monica. Not Lindsey. Lindsey would be a lot simpler, and I wasn't born for that."

I gasp as her eyes unearth from beneath the wide shadow of her hat.

They are _blue_. I don't know what I was expecting. Brown, maybe. Yeah, brown sounds about right. Or maybe a dimly darkened hazel green. But blue eyes were the last thing I expected to see beneath her charcoal sheet of hair.

They sparkle, and this is another surprise. Her cynical voice bites through the sand, and tugs persistently at the bottom of my cotton shirt. I was beginning to get the feeling that she wanted me to listen without having to tell me to. She is a mystery, I want to figure her out.

I'm beginning to feel like Mister Rogers or some dumb children's show, trying to place two similar topics together as I think about figuring out Monica.

_"The mystery needs to be solved, children. Open the door with the key, children, the ocean is behind the sand, children."_

I've always hated those shows. The ocean might be behind the sand in Jersey, but I bet that this beaches' sand is behind the watersin China. It just depends on your point of view.

That bit of cynicism dangerously lacing her assured words somehow doesn't seem to reach her eyes. They are innocent, unlike the rest of her personality, I think.

She smiles at me, faintly. I suppose some people wouldn't even classify that little mouth-twitch as a smile, but I take it as one. It's all I can do.

"Well, maybe I'll see you tomorrow. The sun tends to set at the same time each night." Monica smiles for real this time, and it feels good to think about her name.

She leaves me now, turning on her small and pale heel, kicking up a sandstorm of dusty pebbles behind her.  
----

_-Chandler, Present Time-_

I glimpse her eyes once more in this faded picture, and they _still _have the ability to burn through my skin. She saw me for who I was, and not the character I tried to be. I don't know how, but she did.

Everything I do now seems so insignificant. I shuffle through my life in a daze, and everyone that knows me thinks it is how I really am. _Hell_, even Heather thinks I'm this cynical bastard and I don't know how she loves me. I don't know how Monica did, either.

But I guess love is complicated, and takes many forms. Sure, I got that phrase from a Hallmark card I read once, but it's true. Hallmark cards often ring all too true. And this also makes me feel painfully insignificant. But I guess you take what you get, huh?

Like that ocean. The ocean may have seemed larger at first, but that first night I realized something: Everything and nothing in the world was hidden beneath the surface of those painfully blue eyes, and it still terrifies the hell out of me.  
----

**_Thanks for reading, guys! Leave me a review if you want to. This one was a little hard for me to write because of the tense it's in. I'm seriously considering changing it, but I'm now beginning to fear that it would disrupt the flow of the story. If there is even a 'flow' yet. I'd appreciate some feedback on it, anyhow. ;) _**

**_Also, I haven't decided if Chandler in the present time is really in 2005 or if the past even took place in the 80's or something. I've been thinking that the past I write about is taking place in the time period we're in right now and the future can be just...whenever I decide. :) But no aliens. Got it? It's 1:15 AM. I don't feel good and I'm going to bed. lol. Thank you!_**

**_Mel_**

_Hard Candy Lyrics, Copyright Counting Crows_


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